Horsehead and Flame Nebulae - with Redcat 51 and 80ED combined

[mightymonoped]

Thought I'd have a go at integrating the combined captures of different sessions with two scopes, one being a fairly wide field with the Redcat, the other a more detailed capture using the Skywatcher 80ED.

Astro Pixel Processor did a pretty good job of integrating the results but I didn't really have the patience to do it properly after two attempts using Local Normalisation Correction.

I cut my losses and processed what I had so far. Clearing up light pollution and then running starnet++ to seperate the star and starless layers after using Topaz Denoise AI to clean up the image first.

Then processed the starless to clean up the obvious joins and bring out the colour and detail. I ran a Match colour saturation and then used curves to reduce the star layer before meging back with the starless image. Final process using High Pass, Contrast and Topaz DN.

 

This is approx 3.5 hours worth of lights with both WO Redcat 51 and SW 80ED
ASI294mc pro at -10C unity gain
Optolong L-pro filter
Star Adventurer & EQ6-R mounts respectively
All data captured using ZWO ASIAir Pro

Integrated in Astro Pixel Processor.
Processed in Photoshop CC

 

Tony

[MKHACHFE]

Absolutely STUNNING work my friend.

Wow. Kudos to you. 👍👍👍👍

[mightymonoped]

2 hours ago, MKHACHFE said:

Absolutely STUNNING work my friend.

Wow. Kudos to you. 👍👍👍👍

Thank you very much! 🙂

[mightymonoped]

Reprocessed this in an unsuccessful attempt to blend the two panes seamlessly. I did use better calibration files this time though.

Although the colours are not as 'in your face' in this version, I prefer the star-handling and I think overall, I prefer it.

The cropped picture is essentially the 80ED capture.

 

Tony

[SimonHutch]

Really nice image.